Chris Cline

Christopher Cline (5 July 1958-4 July 2019) was an American coal businessman who was responsible for reviving the Illinois coal industry. He died in a helicopter crash in the Bahamas in 2019.

Biography
Christopher Cline was born in Beckley, West Virginia in 1958, and he became a miner at age 22 and founded his own energy development company, the Cline Group, in 1990. He went on to become the majority owner of Foresight Reserves LP in St. Louis, and he revived the Illinois coal industry during the 2000s. His company came to own over 3,000,000,000 tons of coal reserves across Illinois and the northern Appalachians, and he supported coal as a cheap energy source. In 2015, he donated to the presidential campaign of Republican candidate Jeb Bush. On 4 July 2019, a day before his 61st birthday, he and six others (including his daughter and the pilot) were killed in a helicopter crash in the Bahamas.